I felt that I had to bow and endure the censure of people from the lower end of society, but it was terrible when my own children criticized me, saying that they didn’t want to look at my face.
—KAWASHIMA RENKO
“Our family members all have very thin eyebrows,” Yoshiko’s grand-niece Kawashima Shōko said in Matsumoto recently. “Yoshiko used to thicken my mother’s eyebrows, using a chopstick with charcoal on the tip. This shows you how feminine Yoshiko really was. She also knit a sweater for my mother.”
There is no question that Yoshiko’s haircut was a momentous event, transforming her life from that day forward. It is also clear that the haircut and its ramifications transformed the lives of some of her Chinese relatives—an effect that persists to this day.
“I never met Yoshiko,” Shōko told me, speaking her Chinese-accented Japanese. “But my mother used to say that while she may have worked with the Japanese military, there’s no proof that she was a traitor to China. There’s no proof about any of those charges made against Yoshiko. My mother always wanted to tell this to the world.”
I met Shōko for the first time in Matsumoto, at the gathering held each year to commemorate Yoshiko’s death. There is also a Kawashima Yoshiko Memorial Room in the town, with a collection of memorabilia, all part of attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Matsumoto’s famed resident. I have seen Shōko address the audience at the annual memorial, somberly speaking out, as the family representative, against inaccurate biographies of Yoshiko. I have also accompanied Shōko to Yoshiko’s grave inside the grounds of Shōrinji, a nearby temple, where the marker avoids inflammatory comment and simply applauds Yoshiko for help in establishing the Japanese state in Manchuria.
Standing amid the temple’s gravestones, with their stern calligraphy, Shōko once spoke without drama of her own dramatic life. Though she thinks nothing of it, Shōko’s presence in Matsumoto now seems a matter of wonder, reflecting nothing less than the entire history of China and Japan in the twentieth century. Shōko told me about her Chinese husband, whose mind was shattered by the Cultural Revolution; turning to the Japanese side of her story, she spoke of her family’s long connection to Kawashima Naniwa and how she never sees his descendants, who live nearby.
In Matsumoto, Shōko can usually put Yoshiko out of her mind as she goes about her daily tasks, but then a news report surfaces about the latest twist in Yoshiko’s saga—she’s dead, no, she’s alive and taught Japanese for thirty years in a secret location—and Shōko is called upon to comment, as a member of Yoshiko’s Chinese family in Japan. Shōko seems resigned to this role, well aware that Yoshiko’s legacy will always rattle her life.
“My mother felt that it was impossible for Yoshiko to have done all they claimed she had done,” Shōko said, persistent in her defense. “They blame her for too many things.”
Shōko emigrated from China to Japan in 1983, when she was thirty-eight years old. Her saga is the familiar but still horrifying kind of tale told by many of her generation in China. In her case, an aristocratic family with a traitor in its ranks compounded her tribulations. Shōko has never forgiven herself for taking part in the madness of the Cultural Revolution; she was repeatedly refused membership in the Red Guards because of a background that includes Qing-dynasty nobles, Kawashima Yoshiko, and other strong ties to Japan. “It is hard for me to find the words to describe my feelings at that time,” she has written. “Just like countless others who threw themselves into the Cultural Revolution, I threw myself into wild rebellion like someone with Saint Vitus’ dance.”
Now a Japanese citizen, Shōko is not reluctant to bring back memories of Yoshiko by borrowing bits of her style. Shōko’s black hair is cropped exceedingly short around a ruddy face, and her no-nonsense outfits, often black trousers and shirts, shun any kind of female frills. The athletic build recalls her time as a volleyball player in China. An injury ended Shōko’s career, as did the Cultural Revolution. The competitive drive has not gone, however, and she remains a forceful and forthright woman.
“History is based on facts,” Shōko declared in firm defense of her great-aunt. “They called Yoshiko a prostitute. They called her Mata Hari, but there are no facts to back up these accusations. I worry about how history will judge her. I hope that during my lifetime Yoshiko will be cleared of charges that she betrayed China.”
Shōko’s present life in Japan is not only tied to Yoshiko but also to the destiny of her mother, Renko (these are their Japanese names), who was Yoshiko’s niece.
“Yoshiko, as well as my mother, were victims of the long history of interactions between Japan and China. Those two didn’t choose to be part of it. They were just thrown about by fate.”
*
Yoshiko’s haircut in 1925 gets their story started; soon after that, Naniwa moved his household from Matsumoto to the Chinese city of Dalian. He hoped to escape from those curious about the uproar in his home and also planned to manage the Dalian market that had proven so lucrative to himself and Prince Su’s family.
But he could not escape reporters even in China, and eventually his family life inspired another headline: “The Troubled Kawashima Yoshiko Starts a New Life Again,” announcing that Yoshiko was leaving Naniwa’s Dalian home. According to the article, Yoshiko was breaking her ties with him and sailing off to live with her original Chinese family in Beijing, where she would become “a pure Chinese woman.”
“I’m going to have surgery at the Rockefeller Hospital in Beijing to remove the three bullets that are still in my body from my recent suicide attempt,” Yoshiko told the newspaper, trying to keep attention focused on her medical problems.
Naniwa presented his side of the story in an interview three weeks later, upon his surprising return to Japan. At the dock, he also delivered some harsh assessments of Yoshiko’s character. “There have been various unexpected rumors about how I have returned Yoshiko to her family and even stories about how I have cut my ties with her. I brought her up for these thirteen years with the expectation that I would find her a husband among the Japanese nobility.” This expectation has been destroyed, he conceded, by her adoption of a male persona. “I wouldn’t say that Yoshiko is asexual, but rather blessed by nature with both male and female aspects.”
He didn’t believe she would be able to return to her former, more conventional self since she was already set in her ways. That’s why he decided to send her back to her family in China, where it would be easier to find her a husband among the Chinese aristocracy.
“Yoshiko is abnormal.” Naniwa shared this more brutal observation with another reporter who also caught up with him just as he reached Japan.
These slurs were not the only startling words Naniwa uttered that day in 1927, and here’s where Shōko’s mother enters the story, for she was standing by Naniwa’s side as he spoke and receiving his affectionate pats on the head. Because of Yoshiko’s outrageous behavior, Naniwa had escorted Renko over from China as a substitute somewhat earlier. Then fourteen years old, Renko was apparently making her first public appearance as Naniwa’s latest Chinese daughter.
A reporter speculated that Naniwa had brought in Renko because he “could not bear his loneliness” after Yoshiko departed. “Renko is different from Yoshiko,” Naniwa declared. “Renko is a feminine, graceful woman. In addition she is extremely attached to me.” He describes how he will bring her up in pure Japanese style, taking her to the mountains to improve her health.
Naniwa’s assessments proved correct, for he had indeed found a more agreeable Chinese daughter in Renko, a sickly young woman with no thirst for rebellion who took to Japan quickly.
“She really became extremely knowledgeable about Japan,” Shōko has written about her mother. “But it was not just that she knew things; the Japanese temperament was burned deeply in her entire spirit. This deeply ingrained Japanese temperament stuck fast to her being, and that did not change as time passed.”
Shōko makes this observation ruefully, for, later on, Renko’s ineradicable “Japaneseness” brought on endless harassment of the family in China.
Unlike Yoshiko, Renko would go on to become indispensable to the deaf Naniwa, serving as his secretary and link to the hearing world. “She accompanied him like his shadow. … Almost always the old Naniwa had the young Renko by his side.” Appreciative of Renko’s services, Naniwa would officially acknowledge her as his daughter by entering her name in his family register. This gave her rights to Japanese citizenship—a favor denied Yoshiko.
As a result of being chosen to take over for Yoshiko, Renko would know tranquil days, especially at Naniwa’s country retreat: “They rowed and swam on Lake Nojiri. After that they’d grill the sweetfish that Naniwa had just caught and eat them. She never forgot their delicious taste.” Renko, like many others, warmed to Japan’s allures—fresh country air, fresh fish, conviviality, the seasons.
But she faced difficulties too in those days of her youth, such as when she had to spend some months as Yoshiko’s roommate “Yoshiko’s selfish character still had not changed,” Shōko writes, transmitting her mother’s recollection of that brief period in 1934.
One night when Yoshiko was about to go out she could find only one of her geta. “You’re a fool,” she said, immediately getting angry and berating the maid. From the entranceway, she threw the single geta into the room.
Renko saw this, frightened, and her face turned pale.
But the next morning, Yoshiko behaved as if nothing had happened when she greeted the maid with, “Good morning.”
The others who lived there were confused, wondering about how to get along with Yoshiko.
*
Standing beside Naniwa on the dock that day in 1927, Renko would not have known about her future participation in such a small-scale domestic scuffle, nor would she have known about her future involvement in full-blown conflicts in China. After living in Japan for some years, Renko would return to China and, in 1940, marry a Chinese, settle down in Beijing, and eventually have six children. Once the war was over, Renko would be refused employment and shunned by neighbors because of her Japanese sympathies and noble blood; she would forage for discarded scraps of food in Beijing’s dustbins. During the Cultural Revolution, with her daughter Shōko scrambling to join the Red Guards, Renko would be denounced in public and feel fortunate to have escaped with her life. Her own children would revile her for her past associations. Decades would pass before she, along with some of her children, would be able to return to live in Japan.
Though much of her grief could be traced back to Yoshiko, Renko never sought to play the heroine in a revenge saga, lashing out at those who had brought her so much misfortune. Instead Renko took up the milder role of a woman who had made numerous mistakes and seen her share of woe. She was willing to look with pity upon Aunt Yoshiko, who had done the same: “She made sure she got noticed in everything she did, but she was truly a good big sister to me. She associated with the Japanese army and with the Chinese, protecting and helping many.”